Carlyle To Acquire Around 25% Stake In Airtel's Data Centre Business

On Wednesday, in a stock exchange filing, Bharti Airtel said that the Carlyle Group will invest $235 million for approximately 25 percent stake in Nxtra Data Limited ("Nxtra"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Airtel engaged in the data centre business.

"The post-money enterprise valuation of Nxtra is approximately US$1.2 billion and Carlyle will hold a stake of approximately 25% in the business upon completion of the transaction, with Airtel continuing to hold the remaining stake of approximately 75%. The transaction is subject to the necessary regulatory approvals, including approval from the Competition Commission of India," the statement said.

Nxtra from Airtel offers secure data centre services to Indian and global enterprises, hyperscalers, start-ups, SMEs and governments. Nxtra's nation-wide portfolio of 10 large data centres and more than 120 edge data centres provides customers with co-location services, cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, data backup, disaster recovery, and remote infrastructure management.

"Nxtra is building multiple large data centres across the country to capture the significant growth opportunities in India. Last year, the Company commissioned a state of the art data centre in Pune and is building more across Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata. Nxtra will use the proceeds from this transaction to continue scaling up its infrastructure and offerings across the country," Bharti Airtel's statement added.

Shares of Bharti Airtel rose more than one percent to open at Rs 574 apiece.